Cardiology

Status

Mission

The Cardiology SIG supports the HL7 mission to create and promote IT data standards by providing a forum in which data specific to cardiovascular medicine and research are identified and through which appropriate data standards are developed. This SIG will enable and advance the concepts the permit the reuse of data for patient care, research, education, administration, billing, quality improvement, ORYX reporting, and post marketing safety research. To further support the HL7 mission, we propose to bring together in this SIG the primary organizations that have an interest in interoperable cardiovascular data including cardiovascular societies, NHLBI, and the cardiovascular-related industry.

Vision

Cardiologists and other stakeholders involved in the capture, reporting and analysis of cardiovascular health data have made significant contributions to the evolution of Evidence Based Medicine. These groups recognize the value of data standards in enabling the reuse of clinical data for multiple purposes in multiple settings. The Cardiology SIG will endeavor to formalize results from a variety of initiatives within the HL7 structures, including HL7 transport structures for healthcare applications and research in addition to textbook definitions of cardiovascular clinical data elements and terms used within a clinical context.

Charter

Work Products and Contributions to HL7 Processes

Provide forum for those with interests in developing and adopting standards supporting cardiovascular data.

Lead the following specific efforts within the HL7 community:

Initially, evaluating the flow of care for a cardiology patient with Ischemic Heart Disease;

then, understanding the data produced for various uses (i.e. clinical care, research, quality improvement initiatives and administration) during those encounters, and generate a cardiovascular master set of data elements to ongoing efforts with this aim across therapeutic areas;

Identify the data that are covered by current messages and what gaps might exist for transporting required cardiovascular data.

and finally, within the HL7 Development Framework understanding what messages can be used to represent the cardiovascular data elements for each of those purposes and produce messages, implementation guides, templates (when HL7 tooling is available), and/or other informative or reference materials to aid implementations.

Throughout all efforts maintain a focus on collaborations with:

the cardiovascular clinical community, including the international community,

other therapeutic areas

existing standards development work,

the value of pilot implementations and

sustainability of SIG efforts.

Formal Relationships With Other HL7 Groups

This SIG will be sponsored by the Patient Care Committee. As heavy interest and support has been offered by the research community an ongoing relationship to RCRIM will be maintained, and it will work closely with other groups as needs develop.